There is a youngbrown-skinned girlwith a navy coatopenedgiving light to a burgundy dresssitting on an orange square.Images stain my mind like the chocolate ice creamthat fell from its coneand hit the pavement,that summer.She is timeand wonder,the moon of mercyand the shadows of an opaqueera,unable to comprehend the connection between herlove and war.

She is there and I am herelooking at my past;seeking the familiarity,thinner,no red lipstick,no short hair,or tiny wrinkles.She is flaunting her adolescencewearing her burgundy dress;single with unoccupied desires,and two muscular hands,minus the hitting of fistsagainst her cheeks.

Her womb is not yet full.She is a woman,un-enlightened,untouched,not yet taintedby one second loversor no mother/father syndromebalancedin a home without heat.

She is the past.Everything I wanna forgetbut keep on embracing.

She is marriageand divorce.Single- motherhood;an unemployedfoodstamplovinggoddesswho carries the rain in her hips.and riding the night winds.

I think I may knowa littleabout your dreamsdeferredand damagedturning themselvesaround and aroundlike magic

Cuz’ like youAmerica was neverAmerica to me either

I have imagined what itwould have been like ifthis landwhich supposedlyis mines and yours(And everyone else who looks like us)would've been a land of freedomor real democracyand something besidesjust a lil' girl's imagination

Oh what a world it would be

But I guess I have some of those basic dreams toothe ones that spin around and aroundand kinda go nowhereand even the ones that seem to play themselves outunexpectedly

and like you---- I wonder:

is there is any land where we are all freefrom the emotional and physical entanglementof a dream deferred?

Cuz’ I am tootangledstretched and called uglybut like you,I won't stop dreaming

You see,cuz’ we never dream in vainand if we allowed America to deferour dreamsit would really make me wonderwho is it we are dreaming for anyway?

We the people are the people who hold our own dreamsand they don't always have to be in tears or sorrows

mines are in my legscuz’ I'm walking with victory

So they can call me uglymost of the time they can't say it to my faceand even if they didmy America is the dream the dreamers dreamed

and there is nothing ugly about that

"America (for Langston Hughes)" won The City College of New York, Esther Unger Poetry Prize, May 2015

I’ve been in the habitof writing things that burn& I imagine one lineat a time,plus my smoldering voiceagainst delicate lettering,so raw, so black, so explosive,and the little girl,hiding inside mepeeking out of her hefty bodywondering what kind of woman am Iand whatkind of man loves meand what kind of Americatakes these immolation chants,and call them freedom,hell; paradiseor maybe these are single mother scriptsgradually resurrected from the ashhaving their way with mebut,my two sons aren’t born yetand I have yet to form any good feelingstowards careless black men or boysand so, there are always questionsand then answersand then silence:

the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed (Exodus 3:2)

Now this, you are more broken than you can understand:like Van Gogh’s Starry Night hanging in some famousperson’s living room while their hiding in the backcloset ripping to shreds the thinness of theirheart. The war cries bob off your chestand there are mystery noisesdraining from your belly.I’m tired of writing about youthis way and like this and that and every thing elsethat is sin and ache and the possibility of you aimlessly in love but never getting to me.I caught you sleeping with your mouth open last nightand I smelled the inconsistency of love and war. You can’t saveyourself or me, from you. If I don’t give up now I may never see you smile.

Some little girls, with plaits and blemishes, cook rice and jerked chicken, as the heat crawls down their spine, in the shack. They wipe tears of beach water and vulnerability from their walls of sacrifice. They eat dinner, wishing they had a T.V. or mum, or dad, to tell them things will get better: one day. They stroke photos of their mummies, gone to big cities. Mummies who send money every month to buy food and pay the rent. Mummies who never call.

Mother I need, mother I need, mother I need your blackness now as the august earth needs rain.Some little girls wear the pretty dresses their mummies send by mail. The dresses tarnished with the labor of ungrateful children, but because the first world’s demand for service workers draws mothers from a variety of developing countries often to care for other people’s children their mummies go. Their mummies care for children that will one day forget them, but “if a man don’t work he can’t eat” and that goes for mummies too. So their mummies work hard, underpaid and poorly treated. Their mummies will be ill with resentment, just like some little girls sitting on the porch holding onto silhouettes of their mummies. The nostalgia is captured in the barrels sent back home, with the dresses, the food, the toiletries, and the shoes. Some little girls never forget the shoes.

The doorbell rings and some little girls welcome familiar faces, drowning in Obsession by Calvin Klein. Damaged portals, who secretly stare at them through the window. “Mah sista ain’t ‘ome” some little girls say. But these faces enter in any way. They know that there are some little girls who are unkempt, yet ripe, like the peaches they enjoy after work. “I’ll wait fa she”, these faces reply, grinning. Then, some little girls, naïve and unaware walk the malicious grins to the sofa, so that they can unbutton their bodies on land that’s never been touched. They forbid screaming, and take the loneliness of their victims and mold it into fear. Some little girls lose their aspirations in the chapped of these lips and foreign anatomy. They bleed their youth as the faces say, “tings will get betta: one dey”. And as some little girl’s have had their virtues tainted, they will be more vacant than the past. They will try to force their miniature hands over the bruises, but they will be too ambitious in their reaching.

This is an excerpt from the lyrical essay titled: "Little Girls What Has Ruined You?", which won The City College of New York, David Dortort Prize in Creative Writing for Non-fiction, May 2018

Maybe, we all got on the flight to America;our sister and I shared the window seat;you sat on mummy's lapand then she left us.Maybe, you will have your first birthday in Apt 5A.Cake, ice cream and our sister’s criesbalanced on the rooftop of grandma’s bad temper.Then, we grow up sitting stone faced on top of the blue velvet sofa,silent talking, believing’: “mum’s coming back.”We brave the brown leather straps; eat Dinty Moore beef stew,and read stories about siblings who were abandonedbut still humane enough to leave bread for the birds.I can see us all now; checks stamped to our foreheads,overweight and voiceless;Maybe we will love each other?Subsequently, mum will return with war storiesby courtesy of her husband who proudly smashes her face against the seasons.But then again, you can always pretend it never happened;slip out of mummy’s lap,cry on the white beach of Barbados, pick up your packages from the Mail service,eat Avocados out of your backyardand write Christmas cards to the 17-year-old that birthed you…​"Maybe" has been published by Free Library of the Internet Void, June 2018internetvoid.com/2018/06/08/and-maybe-by-kay-bell/